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  • Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten
  • Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Bibliotheken in Neuburg an der Donau: Sammlungen von Pfalzgrafen, Mönchen und Humanisten. Edited by Bettina Wagner . Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. x, 216 pp. €38,00. ISBN 3-447-05197-3.

Books, collections, and even whole libraries move—a lot. This set of essays celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of the Staatliche Bibliothek (previously, the Provinzialbibliothek) Neuburg an der Donau. Growing out of a series of lectures given in the summer of 2003, these contributions provide both a historical overview of the library and insights into social and political history, the history of collections and libraries, rare books and manuscripts, and monastic history. [End Page 91] Complementing the texts are several photographs of related materials in Neuburg and elsewhere as well as thirty-two color plates depicting architectural history, decoration, and collections. Thus, this is neither a catalog nor an introduction to the use of the collections but rather a celebration of libraries and collections in or from Neuburg.

In the opening essay Reinhard Seitz outlines the history of the Staatliche Bibliothek from the earliest records of the building through the formative stages in the early nineteenth century and up to the present. The essay concludes with an overview of directors in the last two centuries. Under the direction of Johann Christoph Freiherr von Aretin the initial core of the library grew out of secularized collections from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (1804) and the Dominican library at Obermedlingen (1806). In 1822 the library absorbed the collection from the former Jesuit school in Neuburg. Medieval manuscripts and incunables from these libraries were largely transferred to the Hofbibliothek (today, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek) in Munich. While secularization improved access to the collections for scholars and the public, periodic removal of duplicate copies has greatly complicated studies of the provenance and earlier history of the collections.

Franz Jürgen Götz describes the medieval books from the Cistercian abbey of Kaisheim (founded 1135) in the next essay. Approximately 225 manuscripts from this collection have found their way to Munich, although some disappeared during foreign occupation and during the secularization. While most of the Kaisheim incunables found their way to Munich, some remained behind in Neuburg. Götz explains the roots of the Cistercian book culture and the minimal library necessary to establish a Cistercian house (e.g., the psalter, antiphonal, gradual, missal, etc.). After an early blossoming in the thirteenth century the Kaisheim scriptorium gradually lost out to books imported from Italy and France.

As with manuscripts, incunables require copy-specific study. Bettina Wagner discusses the history of research into the incunables from Neuburg collections and the role of the secularization of monastic libraries in the opening of antiquarian collections to the public. These collections did not represent the full range of fifteenth-century published works, in that most monastic libraries contained works on theology but not as many literary or other kinds of texts. At the same time, the secularized collections in Bavaria formed the foundation of some of the earliest authoritative incunable studies, such as Ludwig Hain's Repertorium Bibliographicum (Stuttgart, 1826–38). Manuscript notes in incunables can also supply invaluable information about the early history of printing, such as the authorship of the popular Schatzbehalter or the dating of the earliest German-language edition of the Bible.

In 1557, after several years of peregrination across Reformation-era Germany and Austria, the classicist Hieronymus Wolf (1516–80) found stability in Augsburg, where he remained until his death. Helmut Zäh recounts Wolf's practice of collecting books to support his teaching and translation activities in classical literature, theology, and philology. In 1572, with his eyesight failing and after many unsuccessful attempts, Wolf was able to sell his collection to the Protestant-oriented Gymnasium illustre in Neuburg. When the Neuburg counts reverted to Catholicism in the early seventeenth century, the Jesuits took over the collection, and upon their dissolution in 1773 the collection came under the control of the Knights of Malta. Eventually, the collection was absorbed into the provincial library, where it still represents a rare example of a relatively complete personal library...

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